


A Practically Frozen Night

by Pastafarian



Category: A Practical Guide to Evil - erraticerrata
Genre: Lycaonese
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-16
Updated: 2021-02-16
Packaged: 2021-03-18 01:07:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29481177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pastafarian/pseuds/Pastafarian
Summary: The wind blows far too cold. A short, quiet, grim piece.
Kudos: 5





	A Practically Frozen Night

The wind screaming down the peaks was ill-tempered at the best of times. The man sitting at his stove, eyes resigned as they watched the embers gutter, remembered those fickle gusts, which gave and took with equal measure; years gone, those days were, and the winds now blew a frozen kind of cruel and nothing else.

He stirred to call over his shoulder, almost, before remembering.  _ Nobody left to call _ , he thought to himself with a little grim chuckle.  _ All the boys and girls were too good to stay. Too kind, too dutiful _ . It was an old refrain. He grunted and instead levered himself up carefully to toss one last coal into the stove. Sitting back down, he watched it catch, watched it glow.

The warmth touched him, chasing the worst of the pain from his joints. The wind howled louder, almost as if in defiance, and he smiled. “Mia -” He stopped himself. She was gone too, with her little ones. She had made a good life for herself, in Hainaut.

Moreill was in Brus, at least, where they would be as safe as anyone could be. Safe unless the Morgentor fell, safe unless the Enemy took that small step past the Kingfisher and the Redcrown, that step which would be the first crackling of the avalanche.

Frieda had finally left a month before, she and her not-entirely-feckless Alamans orphan boy -  _ man _ \- of hers. They and their littles, all three of them, backs laden with packs almost more symbolic than practical.

Almost. Which is to say, not at all.

  
He thought perhaps Frieda knew, leaving. She always had a keen eye, that one. Smartest and kindest of the lot who’d stayed, those quick bodies that were two rounds of ash on the wailing wind and one burial in a rat’s belly. Only Frieda had been left in the end, proud Klaus’s widow, left with memories of a man whose name was larger than he could carry and a swelling belly that she had to carry without his help.

Yes, Frieda knew, the man thought to himself. She might not have seen him slip the coal into the children’s packs, but she’d have seen what was left, and it had been only Moreill who’d tried to argue with his father-in-law when the old man had handed out the packets of dried meats to the children openly. She’d  _ understood _ , that was all; best of daughters, Klaus’s only wisdom.

More steel in her hair than most ever had in their spines. She had simply ushered everyone out the door, kissed him goodbye. The children were to go south with the boy; she’d walk north.

.

The wind screaming down the Passes was ill-tempered at the best of times. When a storm blew for three weeks instead of three days, a man could run out of firewood; could slip, working to bring more in from the cold.

His eyes had frozen long before the storm was over, staring open in the eternal sleep at the blackness where fire had burned down to guttering embers and then gone dark. They’d come to bring the news; they left only a torch behind, and a light rose as they departed.

A middle-aged woman’s clothes and what little they scrounged from the old man’s house, they would bring back north.

They were Lycaonese.

**Author's Note:**

> Not all deaths are meaningful. Not all deaths are heroism. Sometimes, it's just... a man running out of firewood in a storm, his family dead or departed.
> 
> The news they were bringing him was his daughter-in-law's death.
> 
> Times are tough.


End file.
